


It Took Far Too Long to Get Him Back

by RurouniHime



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Community: kinkme_merlin, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-23
Updated: 2011-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 16:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur sits at his window, wearing the same clothing he always has, his hair ruffled the same way, but he is not the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Took Far Too Long to Get Him Back

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: tough subject matter, mentions of non-con/torture, SLIGHT SPOILERS for season one
> 
> Written in response to this prompt at kinkme_merlin: http://community.livejournal.com/kinkme_merlin/1108.html?thread=306004#t306004 . I have since done a little editing.

It took far too long to get him back. Merlin knows this, in his sleep, in his dreams, in his conscious hours.

He knew it even before Arthur was taken, a frenzied wail caroming through his ears, waking him and spilling him from Arthur’s bed, until Arthur grabbed him and brushed his hair back and touched his face and told him to _breathe, calm down, Merlin, what in god’s name?_

Merlin couldn’t speak it aloud. He wasn’t the prophet anyway, and Morgana had said nothing about it.

Now Arthur sits at his window, wearing the same clothing he always has, his hair ruffled the same way, but he is not the same. Merlin wishes he’d been faster, even though he was indeed fast, and the abductors are all indeed burnt, and it’s a relief Arthur was not lucid enough to see it as more than a milky hallucination, and… but it’s not a relief, it’s fucking _not_ , not at all, because he wishes Arthur knew what he’d done so that he doesn’t need to keep it from him anymore. Damn everything, he can’t stand to hold such a secret now.

Arthur sits, his hand touching lightly to his chin, and holds all the secrets.

He has a cut, just there under his jaw. A precise line that was made by a very sharp blade. It’s the only one Merlin can see, because Arthur has not asked for help with anything for the last two days. He dresses himself. He undresses himself. He moves from bed to chair to window. He murmurs assent to tasks Merlin has completed for him, but Merlin is afraid he’s forgetting how blue Arthur’s eyes are, because he has yet to meet them since he dug Arthur out of that decrepit black cell.

The manacles seared Merlin’s hands where the magic shot through and snapped them right off, sizzled them away in a smoking stench of molten steel until he could feel the abraded flesh of Arthur’s wrists under aching fingertips again. Merlin remembers tasting salt in his mouth, cradling Arthur’s face and watching his eyelids flutter. Only white revealed.

Arthur’s wrists are burnt; black strips circle just at the edges of his sleeve. Merlin knows they are there, though they are now covered in bound cloth, pale and clean. Arthur’s finger taps absently at his chin, and Merlin feels ill.

He wants Arthur’s abductors alive again, again and again so he can rip that life from their bodies just once more, because he can’t talk to Arthur anymore, he can’t look at him anymore, he can’t face himself in the mirrors anymore because _it took far too long to get Arthur back._

He wants to know, at the same time as he doesn’t. He’s afraid to know.

He readies Arthur’s shift and settles it over his pillow. The fabric is clean and soft, the same he wore the night Merlin dreamed him in chains; Merlin can tell by the small fray of thread on the right side of the neckline. Merlin worried it into existence there— it feels like ages have passed since then, a touch that turned into a tease that turned into a caress, until Merlin couldn’t keep his hands off of Arthur—

Merlin keels and catches himself one-handed on the bed. There is no sound; Arthur has not moved from his seat at the window. Merlin’s heart is a hammering mess. The taint is there, on the air he sucks into his lungs, on the edge of every thought, and most horribly, every memory.

He _can’t_ remember Arthur now. Not the Arthur he held, sweaty and sated, inches from where his hand now rests. All he can think of is two days in a cell. Two days of which he has no knowledge.

“Is… Will there be anything else, sire?” he asks, when he can speak. Arthur does not move to show he has heard; he sits with his face lit by the twilight’s glow. There’s nothing in his expression to indicate discomfort, but there is a hollowness that was not there before.

Finally, Arthur’s fingers twitch. “Yes,” he answers, and rises from the chair, still facing the window. It’s so normal. “If you could stay, tonight.”

Merlin catches himself before the shock can show or come out in words, god forbid. It has never been a question with them, not even the first night, months ago, when the tether between them had cinched, snapping Merlin into Arthur’s grip, and then his grasp, and then his kiss. His bed. His body. Like the normal shifting of sands on a beach. Merlin shifted and Arthur shifted, and everything mixed and came together. Arthur has never, ever asked him to stay, though Merlin has stayed, many times.

Arthur Pendragon has never needed to ask.

“All right.” It should be a relief. Merlin still feels like he’s going to sick up. “I’ll just… I’ll get some more bedding.”

The slightest of frowns, just there between Arthur’s brows. “For the floor,” Arthur says, like he’s commenting on a bridle Merlin has adjusted improperly.

Merlin frowns, too, raises his hands and puts them down again because movement does nothing. It did nothing when they took Arthur, and it does nothing now. “You don’t want me sleeping in the bed, do you?” he asks, more incredulous than even he thought he was.

“I’d rather you did, if you don’t mind.” Arthur still hasn’t looked his way. The window is full of distraction. Or full of the past. Merlin turns it over in his head. Again. Finds he is missing some crucial piece.

Damn it. He knows the piece he’s missing. He knows how to stop missing it, as well. He just doesn’t think he has that courage.

The other revelation is already happening when Merlin finally notices, and he freezes, avid and horrified. Arthur pulls his shirt over his head, his movements contained, just a twitch where he needs it, a tug to the throat laces. The shirt slides up and over his body, over the muscles of his shoulders, over his arms. Merlin sees the wounds and his eyes start to burn.

They are not yet wholly knitted: long hot lines of harsh pink, or tiny reddened nicks. There are three horrors angled just beneath his ribs, and they draw Merlin’s eye because he can see how deep they were, how precise. These wounds had demands, and those demands were most likely met, because… because there are only three.

Arthur does not move in a gingerly manner, not anymore. He does not move like himself either. Everything is slower. Passive. As if he’s thinking about each motion before he makes it, while he’s making it, after he makes it. Arthur unlaces his breeches in the same way, slides them off and then picks them up and folds them over the back of his chair. He runs a hand through his hair, and the strands flick and muss nervously as if they are themselves alive. There’s something vacant in Arthur’s eyes, as if he’s watching something only he can see.

Merlin takes the folded shift in hand before he can rethink it and holds it out. Arthur dons the garment without speaking, and Merlin suddenly remembers that he is still dressed in the clothing he’s worn all day, a day of pacing and worrying, of rubbing tired eyes and trying very hard not to think too carefully. He is caught for an instant, unable to move, and then he forces his feet to the wardrobe and pulls out another clean shift. Undresses with shaking hands.

Arthur does not stretch, one arm and then the other over his head, back arching and sinuous, and the lack strikes soundly because Arthur always stretches like that. Every single night, even the ones that involved alcohol and frantic hands and bodies pressed together and coming even before the bed was reached. There was always that singular moment when Merlin looked up from his sprawl on the plush blankets and watched Arthur arch the kinks right out of his muscles.

Arthur gets into bed without it tonight. Merlin can only stand there, riveted in place, pulse thundering, seeing the legs he knows— knew— so well, marred with small wounds and yellowing bruises, still muscled, still pale and strong, and still Arthur’s, and he knows…

God. He knows he cannot touch the body they belong to without watching the one thing he’s trying to hold back break from him completely.

“Arthur,” he chokes, and this time Arthur looks up, right _at_ him, and Merlin has no voice. “Did they. Did…?”

Arthur’s eyes are deep blue. “No,” he answers, not breaking the gaze he has so long withheld. One hand trembles and then falls still. “They didn’t do that to me.”

There is no lie under the words. And then Arthur’s face shifts, just a shiver, and Merlin knows he is not lying, because he can see the _fear_ now, vague and huge in Arthur’s eyes. They threatened him with it, or Arthur assumed it would happen. Whichever one is the truth, it terrified him. Terrifies him still. They cut him and beat him and asked their questions and had their fun, and he waited for the moment when they would step over the next line.

Arthur looks down at his hands. “Aren’t you tired?”

Merlin moves to the other side and gets into the bed slowly, pulling the thick quilt over his limbs. Arthur’s movements echo his as they situate themselves, and then Merlin is facing Arthur, viewing his profile and noting the arm that lies between them, slightly angled toward him, palm up. Merlin doesn’t move. Arthur swallows, and his throat ripples.

“Please tell me you’re keeping your distance to be polite,” he says dully to his bed hangings.

Merlin grabs Arthur’s hand before he can think, and the answering clench is so startling that he lets go. Pulls back. Arthur turns his head, emotion showing for the first time; it’s uncertainty, a different kind of fear, and Merlin moans.

“Arthur,” he breathes and finds fingers in his again, warm and familiar and callused. Arthur’s face twists.

“Do you not want…?” The question vanishes. Arthur’s fingers brush over one long, shallow cut on his stomach, then the three under his ribs. Merlin’s chest seizes.

“No, I didn’t want to hurt you,” he bursts out. “It’s not that I don’t want… I didn’t know if… _They_ hurt you, and I can’t, I can’t do that, I can’t remind you of what they did.”

Arthur’s mouth trembles as if he’s losing his grip on something tightly held. His eyelids dip and open again, and when he looks at Merlin this time, there is a tight, glowing thing there between them. “You don’t,” Arthur whispers. “Merlin, you’ll never remind me of them.”

It isn’t so much a need to reassure Arthur as it is a need to touch him, to be against his body again and to taste his tongue and skin. His pulse, still beating. Arthur’s shudder is another revelation, and Merlin clings to him so Arthur knows that nothing will ever make him undesirable, not cuts nor bruises nor haunted eyes, not skin bearing more scars nor cracks in the wall Arthur has built within. Merlin knows they are there, and knows that some of those wounds broke completely through. Knows they will need to be patched up, bolstered. And perhaps the holes will never actually close. Arthur pulls Merlin’s shift back off him, then urges Merlin up, over him, cradles his hips between his knees, and searches out Merlin’s mouth. They are together before the thought of it coalesces, bare skin and heat, and the familiar taste of Arthur’s sweat on Merlin’s tongue.

He’s still wrapped around Arthur, stuttering for breath and blinking away the haze of coming when Arthur begins to shake, and Merlin knows he’s crying. He feels each breath heaved against his bare chest, the press of Arthur’s nose and forehead and cheek as he struggles his way through it. Merlin buries his face in Arthur’s hair, and it smells fragrant and salty. Arthur’s hands slide over him, clutching, looking for somewhere to hold. To hold himself upright again.

“I love you,” Merlin whispers. He tastes his own tears as they slip over his lips and get lost in Arthur’s hair. There are words, broken and patched together. _I thought I would never do this again with you._

Arthur finds a fast grip on Merlin, arms tight and tense around him, their legs tangled together, and breathes. Merlin breathes, too, at last.

~fin~


End file.
